Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (72 page)

 

The soul, its destinies, the real real,
(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;)
In thee America, the soul, its destinies,
Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous!
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls‘d, (by these thyself
solidifying,)
Thou mental, moral orb—thou New, indeed new, Spiritual
World!
The Present holds thee not—for such vast growth as thine,
For such unparalleled flight as thine, such brood as thine,
The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold thee.

Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still,
Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of
mossbonkers
^br
—they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water,
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the
beach, enclosing the mossbonkers,
The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop ashore,
Some of the fishermen lounge in their boats, others stand ankle-
deep in the water, pois’d on strong legs,
The boats partly drawn up, the water slapping against them,
Strew’d on the sand in heaps and windrows, well out from the
water, the green-back’d spotted mossbonkers.

Thou orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
O sun of noon refulgent! my special word to thee.

 

Hear me illustrious!
Thy lover me, for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe, then happy boy alone by some wood edge,
thy touching-distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my
invocation.

 

(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice—
and thou O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of
flame gigantic,
I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations
well.)

 

Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O‘er myriad farms, o’er lands and waters North and South,
O‘er Mississippi’s endless course, o’er Texas’ grassy plains,
Kanada’s woods,
O‘er all the globe that turns its face to thee shining in space,
Thou that impartially infoldest all, not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so
liberally,
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me, with but a fleeting ray out of
thy million millions,
Strike through these chants.

 

Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for these,
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself—prepare my
lengthening shadows,
Prepare my starry nights.

Sauntering the pavement or riding the country by-road, lo,
such faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality,
The spiritual-prescient face, the always welcome common
benevolent face.
The face of the singing of music, the grand faces of natural
lawyers and judges broad at the back-top,
The faces of hunters and fishers bulged at the brows, the shaved
blanch’d faces of orthodox citizens,
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist’s face,
The ugly face of some beautiful soul, the handsome detested or
despised face,
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of
many children,
The face of an amour, the face of veneration,
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock,
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face,
A wild hawk, his wings clipp’d by the clipper,
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the
gelder.
Sauntering the pavement thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry,
faces and faces and faces,
I see them and complain not, and am content with all.

Do you suppose I could be content with all if I thought them their own finalè?

 

 

This now is too lamentable a face for a man,
Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it,
Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

 

This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage,
Snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

 

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea,
Its sleepy and wabbling icebergs crunch as they go.

 

This is a face of bitter herbs, this an emetic, they need no
label,
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog‘s-lard.

 

This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the
unearthly cry,
Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show nothing
but their whites,
Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn‘d-in
nails,
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he
speculates well.

 

This face is bitten by vermin and worms,
And this is some murderer’s knife with a half-pull’d scabbard.

 

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee,
An unceasing death-bell tolls there.

Features of my equals would you trick me with your creas’d and
cadaverous march?
Well you cannot trick me.

 

I see your rounded never-erased flow,
I see ‘neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

 

Splay and twist as you like, poke with the tangling fores of fishes
or rats,
You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

 

I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobbering idiot they had at
the asylum,
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharm‘d, every
inch as good as myself.

The Lord advances, and yet advances,
Always the shadow in front, always the reach’d hand bringing up
the laggards.

 

Out of this face emerge banners and horses—O superb! I see
what is coming,
I see the high pioneer-caps, see staves of runners clearing the way,
I hear victorious drums.

 

This face is a life-boat,
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of
the rest,
This face is flavor’d fruit ready for eating,
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.
These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,
They show their descent from the Master himself.

 

Off the word I have spoken I except not one—red, white, black,
are all deific,
In each house is the ovum, it comes forth after a thousand
years.

 

Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,
Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me,
I read the promise and patiently wait.

 

This is a full-grown lily’s face,
She speaks to the limber-hipp’d man near the garden
pickets,
Come here
she blushingly cries,
Come nigh to me limber-hipp’d
man,
Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,
Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,
Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and
shoulders.

The old face of the mother of many children,
Whist! I am fully content.

 

Lull’d and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
It hangs thin by the sassafras and wild-cherry and catbrier under
them.

 

I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
I heard what the singers were singing so long,
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the
water-blue.

Behold a woman!
She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more
beautiful than the sky.

 

She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head.

 

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it
with the distaff and the wheel.

 

The melodious character of the earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and does not wish
to go,
The justified mother of men.

Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician,
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.

 

I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes,
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,
Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost.

Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds
Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life
Was fill’d with aspirations high, unform’d ideals,
Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,
That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing,
pealing,
Gives out to no one’s ears but mine, but freely gives to mine,
That I may thee translate.

Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee,
While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,
The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day withdraw,
A holy calm descends like dew upon me,
I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of Paradise,
I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses;
Thy song expands my numb’d imbonded spirit, thou freest,
launchest me,
Floating and basking upon heaven’s lake.

Blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,
Bring the old pageants, show the feudal world.

 

What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me,
Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle halls,
the troubadours are singing,
Arm’d knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of the
holy Graal;
I see the tournament, I see the contestants incased in heavy
armor seated on stately champing horses,
I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel;
I see the Crusaders’ tumultuous armies—hark, how the cymbals
clang,
Lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on
high.

Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,
Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the
setting,
Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,
The heart of man and woman all for love,
No other theme but love—knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.
O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me!
I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the flames
that heat the world,
The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers,
So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death;
Love, that is all the earth to lovers—love, that mocks time and
space,
Love, that is day and night—love, that is sun and moon and
stars,
Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,
No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.

Blow again trumpeter—conjure war’s alarums.

 

Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls,
Lo, where the arm’d men hasten—lo, mid the clouds of dust the
glint of bayonets,
I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash amid the
smoke, I hear the cracking of the guns;
Not war alone—thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every
sight of fear,
The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder—I hear the cries
for help!
I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on deck and below deck
the terrible tableaus.

O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest,
Thou melt‘st my heart, my brain—thou movest, drawest, changest
them at will;
And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me,
Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope,
I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the
whole earth,
I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, it
becomes all mine,
Mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled
feuds and hatreds,
Utter defeat upon me weighs—all lost—the foe victorious,
(Yet ’mid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to the last,
Endurance, resolution to the last.)

Now trumpeter for thy close,
Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,
Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,
Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,
Give me for once its prophecy and joy.

 

O glad, exulting, culminating song!
A vigor more than earth’s is in thy notes,
Marches of victory—man disenthral‘d—the conqueror at last,
Hymns to the universal God from universal man—all joy!
A reborn race appears—a perfect world, all joy!
Women and men in wisdom innocence and health—all joy!
Riotous laughing bacchanals fill’d with joy!
War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged—nothing but
joy left!
The ocean fill’d with joy—the atmosphere all joy!
Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of life!
Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!
Joy! joy! all over joy!